Radio plays keep audience in stitches

Photo provided
Stage Coach Players will present two radio plays – "Cut 'Em Off at the Past!" and "Case of the dueling Divas" – on April 13.

DeKALB – For more than 75 years, people have been entertained by radio programs. Some shows have remained standard listening fare, and some newer programs have become classics in their own right. Two of those newer radio programs will be featured this spring by Stage Coach Players. “Cut ‘Em Off At the Past!,” from Firesign Theater’s Nick Danger, Third Eye, and “Case of the Dueling Divas,” from Imagination Theater’s Harry Nile, will be performed at Stage Coach at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 13.

The detective dramas will be directed by longtime Stage Coach member Barb Andree and will feature entertaining live sound effects and music.

Nick Danger is an irreverent parody of the inimitable Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe private-eye genre. Created by one of the zaniest comedy groups of the 1960s and 70s, Firesign Theater, “Cut ‘Em Off At the Past!” is filled with double entendre, crazy sound effects and puns. This all-out spoof of the classic radio detective comes from Firesign Theater’s 1969 album, “How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You’re Not Anywhere at All.”

Fictional cop-turned-detective Harry Nile started his broadcast career in 1976. As a rookie cop in Chicago post-World War II, Harry ran afoul of the mob and moved to Los Angeles to protect his family, and later plied his trade in Seattle. Harry is not your typical hard-boiled P.I., rarely using his gun or fists to settle things, but he can be as tough as nails when necessary. He doesn’t have a partner, but his smart and sassy assistant, Murphy, is his indispensable sidekick. In the “Case of the Dueling Divas,” originally aired in November 2008, Harry tracks down the perpetrator of some nasty tricks between two opera stars.

The Harry Nile series is produced in Bellevue, Wash. by Jim French, airs as part of Imagination Theatre on KNWX in Seattle and is syndicated internationally.

Both shows will be performed one time only, at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 13, at Stage Coach Theater, 126 S. Fifth St. in DeKalb.